There was a time when calling a restaurant meant a real person picked up — always. The answering machine only kicked in after closing. These days, calling your favorite spot in St. Louis can feel like shouting into the void: press 1 for hours, press 2 for directions, press 3 to be reminded of the website you already checked before dialing.
And that’s the rub. Nobody calls a restaurant to hear its hours read back to them. People call because they have the question the website couldn’t answer. Can the kitchen handle a shellfish allergy? Is there a ramp for a wheelchair? Where do you park on a busy South Grand evening? Can they hold a table for an odd party size, or send a bottle of wine to someone celebrating at table 12? Getting bounced back to the website for that kind of ask feels like being sent to the back of a line you’ve already stood in.
To be fair, there are two sides to this. Anyone who’s worked a dining room knows the phone can ring at the worst possible moment — and in a small restaurant, the person answering might also be greeting guests, running food, and taking orders. Nobody expects a host to drop a tray of drinks the second the phone buzzes. A short hold, a straight answer, or a callback within a reasonable window is perfectly fine.
Automated systems aren’t useless, either. They can give hours, directions, and reservation links without pulling a server off the floor. But the moment a question falls outside those neat boxes, getting a human on the line should be easy. Hospitality starts before you walk through the door — sometimes it starts with someone simply picking up the phone. As for restaurants that don’t even have a number anymore? Don’t get me started.
So which side are St. Louis diners on? Local food writers weighed in, and the takes were all over the map.
Some leaned generous. One argued that in this economic climate, restaurants deserve a lot of leeway — some of the best spots have never had a phone at all, and she’ll adapt to AI the same way she adapted to ordering from a kiosk. Another said the only time she ever calls is to give a courtesy heads-up when she’s stuck in traffic; she’d happily make and change every reservation without talking to a soul.
Others weren’t so forgiving. One writer traces our collective rage back to automated phone trees — everyone has screamed “get me an agent!” into the void at least once. For a sit-down restaurant, that kind of treatment is the opposite of hospitality: it’s the first interaction of the whole dining experience, and without a human in it, the restaurant starts the night in the negative. Another put it bluntly: if a place can staff someone to hand you a bill and take your money, it can staff someone to answer a phone.
And then there were the practicalists. One writer only wants a press-1, press-2 menu that actually gets her to a human fast — “press 1 for location, press 2 to speak with our team” — which might even save the bar staff from fielding calls mid-rush. Another argued the pendulum could swing back entirely: as customers run out of patience with automation and AI, having a real human answer the phone might become a genuine selling point for restaurants — provided, of course, that the human is friendly. Even humans can be trained, she noted.
The most charming argument came by way of the Steak ‘n Shake drive-through. One writer, stuck in line, realized she’d forgotten to ask for cheese fries — so she called the restaurant from her car before reaching the window, and they added the order without missing a beat. Her verdict: if your customer service can’t rise to the level of a drive-through joint, you’ve got big problems.
Bottom line? Nobody in town expects a host to hover by the phone all night. But when a diner calls with a real question — the allergy, the surprise, the reservation that doesn’t fit the online form — a person on the other end of the line is still the fastest route to a good night out. In a city that prides itself on hospitality, that’s not nostalgia. That’s just good business.
